Webmasters’ Guild

User-Centered Web Redesign: Project Overview

Presented by:Susan Powell and Jen StrandNYS Department of Taxation and Finance

www.tax.ny.gov

Webmasters’ Guild

What we’ll cover

Project context

What we did, how we did it & our time frame

Key success factors & challenges

Webmasters’ Guild

• Strong web governance structure & web blueprint

• Very large site: 3k pages, 20k PDF’s, 50+ online services

• Decentralized content management structure

• Mature CMS implementation (Interwoven) & templatized web pages

• Data: web statistics (Web Trends), survey data, call center data, etc.

• Skill sets: usability, writing for the web, graphic design, HTML, scripting

Project context

Webmasters’ Guild

Webmasters’ Guild

Webmasters’ Guild

Usability consulting firm expert review

• evaluate site’s strengths & weaknesses

• focus: support business objectives and provide an effective UI

• create formative page design including navigation, content

• provide long-term, strategic recommendations

Recommendations

• create new site structure & supporting navigation• write content for the web• design customer-focused, task-based site pages• integrate site task elements within pages

Review time frame: Two months

What we did, how we did it & time frame

Webmasters’ Guild

Phase 1 (six months)

• interviewed customers & stakeholders

• analyzed web statistics

• benchmarked similar sites

• developed site structure & recommended task-based content

• recommended UI prototype & navigation structure

What we did, how we did it & time frame

Webmasters’ Guild

What we did, how we did it & time frame

Phase 2 (nine months)

• built prototype & wrote new content

• conducted online card sort usability test

• contracted for usability testing with consulting firm

• revised design based on test results

• contracted for technical assistance to create/automate new structure

• tested new site

Webmasters’ Guild

New site design•Persistent (secondary) navigation bar: users can ‘bin’ themselves by audience or select Get Help

• More integrated, task-based content

• Online services log in/create account featured on home page

• Audience pages include ‘ads’ and news

• Left navigation bar expands/contracts

• Underlying folder structure changed for some content, changing URLs

What we did, how we did it & time frame

Webmasters’ Guild

Webmasters’ Guild

Webmasters’ Guild

Webmasters’ Guild

• User-centered design process based on objective user behavior data

• Strong executive support

• Web governance structure

• Consultant expertise

• Communication

• Post-launch analytics & focus on continuous improvement

Key success factors

Webmasters’ Guild

• Writing for the web capacity

• Shifting content format from PDFs to HTML pages

• Lack of usability test facilities and ability to compensate testers

• Lack of customer satisfaction survey (aside from web survey)

• Integrating static content with online services

• Increasing multilingual web content

• Integrating Office of Real Property Tax Services site

Challenges: project & ongoing